Heat by Rob O’Neill

I’ve mentioned our plan to move up the road to Rozelle before. Now, in addition to a dishwasher and a view, the Girlie wants a home with a bomb shelter. And she’s pretty serious.

While I have to take some responsibility (talking about nuclear winters over dinner was arguably unecessary), this is a deeply sad development. As one who grew up as the Cold War cooled, I still remember a fascinating book that lay around ours telling us what to do in event of nuclear attack.

Such books were a feature in many households. It had all sort of illustrations about how you could make a shelter beneath the stairs with mattresses. We didn’t have any stairs so that wasn’t very helpful. It also showed what you could do if you were caught outside – roll into a ditch, or if one wasn’t handy just roll up in a ball. Fallout was shown in the form of a bright red glowing dust cloud.

We thought that was all history and kids could grow up without having to worry about nuclear armageddon, but it’s all coming charging back.

Still, a little insecurity never did us any harm, did it? I’m sure she’ll adjust.

In the interests of becoming a better parent I have consulted online sources that suggest the best way to talk to your kids about war is to work it out through play.

So last night we booted up Command and Conquer on the PSII. Unfortunately there isn’t an Iraq version yet so we could only blow away a few thousand damned commies.

But it seemed to work. The Girlie seems a lot more settled.

As to the war coverage – over here it’s incessant. After all this is a war to defend Australia. We all know that Iraq was behind the Bali bombing. We are on the front lines defending freedom etc etc. The only problem is I never realised war on TV could be so boring. You end up watching the same piece of film over and over and over - seen Baghdad bombed once and you’ve seen it a million times.

Here's a suggestion. Tommy Franks should be booted out and his responsibilities should be transferred to Kerry Packer. He can then work TV magic as he did with one day cricket - brighten the uniforms up a bit, get in a few sponsors. Baddabing baddaboom.

We can all recognise hypocrisy when we see it and we are now seeing plenty. The issue of televising POWs is a striking example. Hypocrisy, I think, is why the world hates America. Bush and his cronies are masters of hypocrisy.

This is a PR war. Spin is rampant, the so called free press is cowed. The regime barks, the media folds.

And that is what increasingly makes journalists a target in the field. If they become tools of propaganda, any propaganda, they may as well just put on a uniform and pick up a gun. Many have already donned the uniform.

But what nobody has noted, as far as I can see, is that showing the Al Jazeera segment of the dead Americans is not by any stretch a breach of the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention was not established to protect the dead. There isn’t even a vague legal case against showing the segment of the dead soldiers, as we have already seen plenty of pictures of dead Iraqi fighters.

But are the networks fighting for their freedoms? No. They are timidly handing them over to Donald Rumsfeld. Why not just invite the Pentagon in to edit the programs directly?

It isn’t just the US media that’s meek and gutless. Over here Channel 7 has refused to show the Al Jazeera film. When taken to task on the issue by a viewer this morning, presenter David Koch launched into a diatribe about what a “sick puppy” that viewer was. They should go and watch another network, he pronounced.

That’s how little issues such as freedom of speech and the obligations of the media get discussed these days.

A few weeks ago I covered the strange goings-on at Coogee. The apparition of Mary in the form of a wooden fence, the faithful flocking and swooning... Since then, you may have heard, the fence was vandalised and the council is now trying to rebuild it in a way that maintains the miracle appearance of Mary in the mid-afternoon sun.

While the Mary of Coogee seems unconnected to the current apocalyptic mood, get a load of this forwarded from Chris B: a couple of fishmongers in New York encountered a 20lb carp that started speaking in Hebrew as it was about to be butchered for a Jewish Sabbath meal.

The Observer reports: "[Fishmonger] Nivelo, a Gentile who does not understand Hebrew, was so shocked at the sight of a fish talking in any language that he fell over. He ran into the front of the store screaming: 'It's the Devil! The Devil is here!' Then the shop owner heard it shouting warnings and commands too.

'It said "Tzaruch shemirah" and "Hasof bah",' he told the New York Times, 'which essentially means that everyone needs to account for themselves because the end is near.'

…some say they fear the born-again President Bush believes he is preparing the world for the Second Coming of Christ, and war in Iraq is just the opening salvo in the battle of Armageddon.”

Apparently there’s a long tradition of talking fish in Jewish Hasidism.

It has been a very quiet weekend. I lost $42 in bets which I couldn’t afford on the Black Caps v Australia. Being a New Zealand supporter has been a depressingly costly allegiance over the last few years. But the money is the least of it – it’s the bagging you get afterwards. I have found, in general, Australians are a lot more reasonable, friendly and generous than most Kiwis give them credit for – except when it comes to sport. On that subject all of your Aussie stereotypes are pretty accurate.

Aussies on the subject of sport are like yanks on power. They quite simply believe they are the best, invincible and anyone who questions that can go to hell. Unfortunately, to a huge degree it’s true, but I’d never tell an Aussie that! Over here, humility and sport are a rare combination, though feigned humility is common.

It comes back to something I’ve suspected for a while – Australia as a nation is really quite insecure. I used to think this about New Zealand, that it craved recognition and any mention of it in the foreign media was a big deal. But I think New Zealand is over that in a way Australia isn’t. On the surface, Australia is brash and confident and has a lot to be confident about. But you don’t have to scratch that surface much to see it is also sensitive, likes to be stroked and told how good it is and how important it is in the world.

Little John loves being seen with Big George, even if he’s not invited to the Azores.

Despite that undercurrent, there is a sense of tradition here that beats most things back home (Maori culture excepted). In New Zealand if something isn’t useful, of immediate economic benefit, it fades away. In Auckland that is especially true of anything with a whiff of the working class.

Australians, and even Sydneysiders, revel in their traditions. Working class culture is defended strongly in pubs, leagues clubs and a union movement that is far from decimated. St Patrick's Day is huge here, due to the number of Catholic/Irish immigrants, from the days of transportation through to the present. The country right now is full to the brim with Irish backpackers, who seem to find the pub culture rather familiar.

Closely following St Pats, and far more important, is Anzac day. The pubs already have their signs out proclaiming “Sydney’s Biggest Two-Up Tournament” and the like.

Two-up is the game the Aussie Anzacs played at Gallipoli, a noisy gambling game involving two coins which became legal last year on Anzac day only. Everybody stands around the toss, shouts a lot and gets seriously inebriated. Two-up was the diggers' game, a game for the common soldier, and it is played today in their memory with gusto.

It’s a great tradition.

Anyway, Chris B went on to say he appreciated and was joining my anti-war protest. He too will drink scotch until the invasion of Iraq is cancelled. He reports his efforts so far “are believed to have prevented the imminent invasion of Australia by Burkina Faso and to have saved thousands of lives as a result. Some New Zealanders have suggested I was wrong to interfere and should have let history run its course. But once you've made a start with these peace initiatives it's difficult to stop.”

We have a movement. Keep going Chris, there’s a long way to go.

It’s been a sweet time round ours, with all the leftovers from Michel’s coming our way. Girlie, surely, has one sweet tooth.

Strawberry cheesecake for breakfast.

Even before the windfalls she had me, after nagging weeks, beating up a tiramisu. Not that I’d ever made it before, understand. Girlie will not be denied.

Now I’ve had some bloody awful, overpriced tiramisu in my time. This week I discovered there’s no excuse. It’s not hard to make and it’s not hard to make well. The trick is, no matter what recipe you use, double the recommended quantity of marsala wine. Easy. Oh, and make sure the cream is whipped just so – so that little peaks will just stand up when you remove the beater.

From there it’s a kitset job. But let me tell you, the one I made was superb. Coffee and marsala and moscarpone cheese to burn. Rich and wet? Tell me about it.

Ask my mate Angus. He tried some the other night before we embarked on our own private anti-war protest. We decided we wouldn’t stop drinking scotch until the US invasion of Iraq was cancelled. Next thing I remember, my mobile is going off.

“Dad, where are you?”

“Wha? Hrmph. Ah… sorry?”

“Where are you? You’re not upstairs.”

“No, ahh, I’m …” looking around desparately. “I’m somewhere else.”

“Dad it’s twenty past eight, I’m going to school.”

“Right, okay.” Belated realisation. “I’m at Angus’, I’ll be right there.”

Now I haven’t said much about international affairs on these pages, mainly because I’m happy to leave that to Russell, who does it better than anyone else around. In fact, you could consider this the “blog about nothing”, like Seinfeld minus the interesting characters.

The international media pointedly ignored our protest, but Angus and I covered some pretty good ground, I recall, before we collapsed. At one point he broke out a collection of war stories and pointed me to one in particular.

Angus was impressed with Tim O’Brien’s intro to “How to Tell a True War Story”:

“This is true.

I had a buddy in Vietnam. His name was Bob Kiley, but everybody called him Rat.”

Damn good it is, and it goes on. But my eye kept straying to the first paragraph after a break on the next page.

“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behaviour, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie… you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”

Prepare yourself for uplifting war stories. They've been stockpiled, like cruise missiles, for a while now. Some are already on their way.

Girlie’s got a job. She’s gone, in a blink, from the girl who puts instant coffee in the percolator to barista.

A few weeks ago she did the rounds of the local shops, asking if they had any work for her after school. Mainly this was at a shopping centre called Birkenhead Point, an outlets mall on the water facing Balmain. Two days ago someone from Michelle’s Patisserie called back and she starts tonight.

I wonder if we get the leftovers?

How she’s going to fit this into her schedule of Playstation, homework, sly parties and anti-war protests, I don’t know. She went into town, but missed, the latest schoolkids anti-war march, which turned into a mayhem of random screeching and running around – all in the cause of peace of course.

Mind you, ten days after we bought it, the Girlie is close to clocking The Getaway and the sly parties have died down now that I’m back in the country.

Me and the Girlie are thinking of moving somewhere a bit more funky. The lease expires in a couple of months and Rozelle, just up the road from our place in Drummoyne, has attracted our attention. Rozelle is at the base of the Balmain peninsula facing the city, very close to town yet very villagy.

The prices seem about right and there are some great terraces and cottages. But get this: Pubs in Drummoyne, 2: Pubs in Balmain/Rozelle, 26. That’s a no-contest.

I’m surprised this little item hasn’t received more play over here. It’s unlike the local media to miss a chance to label kiwis bludgers. I guess with detention centres full of Afghans, Pakistanis and so forth New Zealand immigrants don’t seem quite so bad, in a “white Australia” kind of way.

And Winston could be right for a change – it’d be interesting to do a “where are they now” piece in five years' time to see where the several hundred refugees New Zealand accepted have ended up.

Yeah, right! I can talk!

We wandered out on Saturday to get the Girlie a desk. Years 11 and 12, as they call sixth and seventh form over here, are pretty important and she’s got a lot of work to do heading into her HSC (Higher School Certificate).

We hit Paramatta Rd, without a lot of luck, and then headed over to the Ikea shop near Moore Park. Having had to set up a house pretty much from scratch I owe Ikea big-time. Need a kitchen? They’ve got one in a box – all the essentials – just walk in and pick it up.

Anyway, we were in the mall and stopped for a milkshake outside a Harvey Norman computer centre. They had one of those electric signs saying we could buy a Playstation II and one game for $369. And one of the games you could buy is The Getaway.

“Wanna buy a Playstation?” I suggest.

“Can we?” says Girlie sheepishlike.

So we do. We buy the one thing that is most likely to keep Girlie from her work and me from doing anything serious about writing. Then we race into Ikea, bought the first kitset desk we could find and motored home at a million miles an hour to get to the Third Place ASAP.

But you really have to see The Getaway to believe it. It marries two previously distinct games engines, as far as I can see, so you can be in a shootout scene, run outside, hijack a car and hit the streets of London. Then you can drive around for a while, check out Soho and Covent Garden, race through Chinatown and along the Embankment, go back and kill a few more hoodlums.

The mood of the game is dark. London gangland. There’s lots of “fuck this” and “fucking wanker”. Chinese are called gooks. West Indians, “Yardies”, steal cars. There’s someone strung up being tortured with electric prods. In short it’s like a game version of The Professionals, or The Sweeney, Softly Softly (showing my age here) or, goddammit, Z-Cars.

Don’t buy it for your 10-year olds. But I can’t help thinking that it marks a new era in games, where they really start to move into the realm of film and fiction. The credits acknowledge, rightly, the scripting and production, just like a movie.

This new genre still has a way to go. To be truly new the scripting has to be less obvious, more “treelike”, and the tech needs to incorporate a third type of game.

Imagine a game like The Getaway where you really have to solve problems, make decisions and each decision you make leads to a new branch in the game. Every game you play then becomes unique. To do that you need more capacity but also need to marry the technology behind “mystery” type games, not sure what their technical title is. The kind of game where you sit with people and hold scripted conversations to solve a mystery.

So then you have extensive mobility through time and space as in The Getaway and a game script that almost disappears as you determine the sets of paths to follow.

Anyway the latest Girlie kitchen atrocity: I wandered in the other day to find her putting instant coffee in the percolator.

“Dad is this coffee better than that other stuff?”